HIREED - Key Persons
Ava is a faculty and leadership coach with more than 25 years of experience in higher education. Drawing upon nearly a decade of experience as an on-air news reporter, she brings a keen awareness of communication and presentation skills. In addition, she helps her clients to build capacity for results-oriented growth and effective impact as they face new challenges.
Ava leads a new faculty mentorship program at Northwestern University and addresses some of the unique challenges and opportunities facing women and faculty of color, particularly around microaggressions. She earned her coaching certification through Coach Training EDU. In addition to teaching, she has held several administrative posts, including associate dean for curriculum, department chair, and co-curator for the nationally recognized Ida B. Wells award.
Ava's research focuses on the intersection of race and gender, specifically black women broadcast journalists. Her recent book, Leading Ladies: The Black Women Who Control Television News, was selected for the 2021 National Association of Black Journalists Author's Showcase. In early 2021, she debuted her first documentary called "Mandela in Chicago," a film about the city's anti-apartheid leaders who worked for Nelson Mandela's release and celebrated his 1993 visit to the Windy City.
Ava holds both a Ph.D. in African American Studies and a master's degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern University. She currently serves as co-director of the South Africa Journalism Residency Program at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University.
Job Titles:
- Leadership Coach, President Emerita, Clarion University
Throughout her 40-year career in higher education, Dr. Karen Whitney has held a variety of executive and leadership positions with increasing levels of responsibility, beginning as a Director to Associate Vice President, Vice-Chancellor, President, and Chancellor. Karen is also a nationally recognized organizational and leadership development writer, speaker, consultant, and advisor. She periodically serves as an interim executive for colleges and universities. Karen holds a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin in Higher Education Administration and is a certified coach through the Center for Executive Coaching.
Karen currently serves as Interim Chancellor for the University of Illinois, Springfield (UIS). UIS is a highly recognized public regional master's university and is one of three universities in the University of Illinois System. UIS serves approximately 4,000 students, employs 800, and has an annual operating budget of $163 million. Previously has served as Interim Chancellor for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), providing strategic leadership to a 14-university system serving over 100,000 students and employing more than 12,000 faculty and staff with a $2.3 billion annual operating budget.
Karen served as President of Clarion University, a large public master's comprehensive university, for seven years. During this time, she led the university through a period of great operational challenge and change, including a transformational reorganization of colleges, departments, and academic priorities. Most notably, she focused the university as a leader in offering innovative professional programs in business, education, and health and human services.
Karen also has extensive leadership experience at different types of institutions. She served as Vice Chancellor for Student Life at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). She also held leadership positions at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and the University of Houston. She held clinical appointments in teaching from the Indiana University School of Education.
Job Titles:
- President and CEO, Retired, Coppin State University
Maria is a career educator whose work experience spans a variety of institutional categories, including research universities, comprehensive universities, land-grant universities, urban-located, rural-located, HBCUs, and PWIs. She served as president and CEO of Coppin State University (CSU) and was the first woman to be installed as president. Before her appointment at CSU, she was provost and vice president for academic affairs at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oneonta, the first African American in the role. She served as vice president for research and sponsored programs at Tennessee State University (TSU), the first woman to serve as chief research officer at the institution. She served as principal investigator on numerous grants. She received millions in federal funding for scientific research, facilities construction, and educational projects from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Department of Energy, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Maria brings insights gained through first-hand knowledge from breaking barriers in leadership roles in higher education to her coaching practice. She is an experienced coach who works with clients who aspire to be deans, vice presidents, provosts, and presidents. In addition to coaching, she has worked closely with Academic Impressions and her colleague, Susan Turell, to develop and provide equity and inclusion-focused programming for historically marginalized job candidates and leadership development for all who wish to grow their ability to be more equitable and inclusive.
During her 30-year career, she focused on developing sustainable, institution-wide strategic and tactical plans to attract and retain historically marginalized faculty and students, with an emphasis on creating opportunities for them to participate in research. She led efforts that supported faculty in submitting proposals for external funding, publishing in peer-reviewed journals, and participating in research development activities. Recognizing that traditional student success metrics penalize campuses that serve significant numbers of historically marginalized students, she advocates for more equitable student success metrics.
She earned a Bachelor of Science from Tennessee State University, a Master of Science from The Ohio State University, and a doctorate from the University of Tennessee.
Paula is an ICF-certified coach who supports clients in conducting successful job searches and making career transitions in higher education. She has coached a wide range of job seekers, including graduate students, faculty at all ranks, administrative staff, and senior-level leaders.
Because of her prior roles in Faculty Affairs at two universities, Paula has an insider's perspective on the hiring process. She has seen thousands of applications over the years and knows what it takes for an application packet to stand out from the crowd. She takes a hands-on approach to coaching job seekers through clarifying career goals, developing high-quality documents, crafting consistent messages across the application and social media, and preparing for job interviews.
Throughout her career, Paula has been a champion for equity and diversity in higher ed. As the Program Director for Faculty Development at the Duke University School of Medicine, she focused on career development for women and emerging leaders. She also served on the Provost's Council on Equity and Diversity. At USC, she trained staff and search committees on conducting open, fair, and equitable job searches.
In addition to coaching, Paula is on the Pepperdine Graduate School of Education and Psychology faculty, where she teaches courses and chairs dissertations. Paula has a doctorate in organization change from Pepperdine University, a master's in public health from UCLA, and an undergraduate degree in biology with minors in psychology and women's studies from Washington University in St. Louis.
In higher education for 30 years, Susan brings a passion to her work for supporting people and designing and implementing effective processes, all striving toward an equity-minded perspective. Her goal is to synthesize best practices and approaches to help shift 21st century higher education toward becoming equitable and inclusive.
Before serving in higher education administration, Susan taught with an equity-minded pedagogy for 16 years in women's studies and psychology. She has been actively committed to anti-racism, systemic change in the academy for over a decade. Decades of reflection, training, and application have laid the foundation for her ongoing commitment to working with others to create institutional-level change toward equity and inclusion via an anti-racism lens. In addition to coaching, she has worked closely with Academic Impressions and her colleague, Maria Thompson, to develop and provide equity and inclusion-focused programming for historically marginalized job candidates. Susan is also passionate about leadership development for all who wish to grow their ability to be more equitable and inclusive.
She served in leadership as a department chair, associate provost, dean, and provost. Her portfolios have included not only academic colleges and departments but also areas that overlap with student success. A seasoned administrator who is a teacher at heart, Susan welcomes the opportunity to share her learnings with new and aspiring leaders, particularly those historically marginalized and everyone who wants to move into positions in which they can influence institutional-level change toward equity. She is committed to helping all to find a good fit, to find positions that will allow them to thrive, encourage their optimism, and support their vision for new possibilities.
Susan earned her Ph.D. and M.Ed. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Houston and her B.A. in Plan II (Honors Program) from the University of Texas-Austin. She has worked at regional comprehensive universities in both large and small state systems, including some that are unionized, and at a private religious university.